Author: Jash (Jesurun) Ramesh

The cemetery was located in Hann, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. The cemetery has 5,075 American soldiers buried there, most of whom died in the Battle of Bulge. The person who showed us around the cemetery was Jennifer Roman.
The tour started with her pointing to two huge maps on walls, of the area of the battle field with arrows showing the directions of the routes Allied forces took and the routes Nazi forces took to launch the surprise attack for the battle of Bulge. She talked about the the strategies and gains of the two sides and about the bravery of American soldiers, for example, in one scenario sixteen U.S. soldiers pushed back an offensive of eight hundred Nazi soldiers.
After this, she went on to tell the individual stories of a few soldiers and pointed out the diverse background of the soldiers buried there. She did this by walking to each person’s gravestone and talked about them by showing their picture.The people she talked about included a Jewish , an African-American, a German born soldier and an Army nurse, the only female in the whole cemetery. The stories of these individuals not only gave a face to them but also helped us to realize that they could have been anyone of us, with unique interests and backgrounds attending to their country’s call.
Towards the end of the visit, it was a very special moment because it started to get dark and she asked the students to help in lowering the two U.S. flags in the cemetery with the Taps playing in the background.

After leaving Paris in the morning we headed to the city of Reims to attend the Sunday service at the famous Notre-Dame de Reims (Our Lady of Reims), also called the Reims Cathedral. This was a very important place because it was the place where all the coronations of the kings of France took place. The most notable of whom was probably Charles VII as the legendary Joan of Arc won the Hundred Years War for him. There was a statue of Joan of Arc in front of the cathedral in honor of her.
When we reached the cathedral, I personally thought it was a tad more magnificent than the Norte-Dame of Paris with all its gargoyles and sculptures adorning its walls.
The cathedrals looked similar in terms of architecture, but the the one in Reims seemed to have more majestic gargoyles and more sculptures adorning its walls.
Then we proceeded to enter the cathedral, and it was just gorgeous inside from the beautiful stained glass windows to the huge stone columns supporting the structure. The service started at ten in the morning and was completely in French and was probably the first Catholic service I attended. The service seemed very organized and traditional. The French songs sounded very pretty and my basic knowledge in French helped me to join in on a few of their lyrics by reading it off the song sheets.